South Alaska-Part 2

After we left Kenai, we stayed at the Denali state park campground. Denali is a completely undisturbed environment, except for a single road going through the middle of it and a few buildings on the side. Its scenic and has lots of wildlife. The plan was to go to the national park and take the bus tour. We did, the bus we took was the cheapest available, so there wasn't an official tour guide driving the bus. Luckily, driving a bus the same way back and forth every day is actually quite boring, so they tell us about the park to help pass the time. I didn't get to sit with my family, instead I say by a guy with an enormous camera. It was one of those camera's that you need to rest on something to keep it steady, so it was sort of like a really fat sniper rifle.

The first bus tour was kind of uneventful, it was really foggy and we didn't see much of anything at all. The second day was much better, I sat by my sister and there was no fog. About an hour into the tour we saw a few brown bears on the side of the road so we watched them for a while until the driver decided we had been there long enough. It was a little odd how the bears just ignored us like we didn't exist even though there were about 20 of us watching them. We kept driving and saw more bears, I still can't believe how many we saw, in all the other parks we went to we were lucky to even see one. When we got to the visitor's center we decided we would walk a little ways back, it wasn't a bad idea since we could hitch-hike with any green bus we wanted to. We were making jokes that my older brother, who had a foot brace on, would be the first to go if we got attacked by a bear. After we walked about a mile, a park ranger pulled over and said we needed to turn around because there was a bear and her cubs just around the corner. My mom managed to convince him to give us a ride past them. He was a strange guy, and I don't think he got out much. The first thing he said when we got in was: "We only give rides during emergencies, so whats your emergency?" He knew we didn't have one, but I guess he had a change of heart once we got inside. My brother said: "I broke my foot last month," and that seemed to work. I can't believe he let us get in, there was a massive 12 gauge shotgun on the car's ceiling right above my head that I could have easily taken.

We saw a total of 8ish bears that time, and some other animals. We saw some golden eagles, a falcon, tons of mountain goats, but no wolves. One of these days I'm going to see one up close. We didn't see Mt. McKinney (the tallest mountain in North America) though, the mountain was always cloudy when we tried to see it. I liked that trip, all the flights were a pain but it was worth it.